For what seems decades now, futurists have been dreaming about, and predicting, a ‘paperless’ society.  And while there are many reasons it’s taking longer than some would like, it is getting closer by the day.  I am something of a troglodyte in this regard, still making many payments by check and liking paper back ups for my digital transactions.  Check usage, by the way, has declined nearly ninety percent over the last decade.  Even preparation of this podcast involves reams of paper.  Our guest today, Scott Heric, told me that he has not used a printer in years.  HP gives me awards for the amount I consume.  Mr. Heric is the co-founder of Unionly, the online payment platform, built for unions, which makes payments online effortless.  Clearly vendors see many benefits in going paperless, which include costs, time, errors and environmental damage.  And while we are given choices now as to whether we wish to suspend our paper statements, it is likely in the next decade there will no longer be the option of ‘either or’.  First, we have to have more reliable broadband and more universal access to make this transition possible. Many people will need encouragement and training.  And a key institution, government, must make the change from paper to digital communications if we are to realize this desirable future. It’s a fascinating subject which we all grapple with in our daily lives.

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From more severe hurricanes to massive flooding to raging wildfires, climate change is having an effect on US cities and their residents, especially the most vulnerable already suffering from environmental injustice.  But behind the headlines of these disasters lie decades of efforts, often spearheaded by grassroots activism, to create more resilient cities.  Our guest, Alison Sant in her book ‘From the Ground Up: Local Efforts to Create Resilient Cities’, along with other contributors, shows how cities are reclaiming streets from cars, restoring watershed areas, reforesting urban areas and designing and implementing large-scale ecological restoration along shorelines.  It’s an inspiring story as these local heroes race against time in an effort to lead from the street-level, as politicians in high places dither.  This all takes place against the backdrop of growing climate distress yearly. Sant takes us around the country to see what is happening on streets, in neighborhoods and by people like you and me to forestall the impacts.

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Will Haskell was about to graduate from Georgetown University when concerns about college affordability, climate change and other liberal causes hastened his entry into elective politics.  It takes a lot of courage for someone who had not held a full-time job to contest a state senate seat in the Fairfield County suburbs of Connecticut held for years by a Republican incumbent.  Many thought it was quixotic of him to take the plunge in 2018, imagining that he was in it only because no one else stepped forward.  It turned out he was in it to win it…and he did.  And in trying to hold on to the seat in 2020 found that his approach to the job garnered even more support, wherein he won 7 of the eight towns in his district with over 58 percent of the vote.   In his early stage memoir ‘100,000 First Bosses: My Unlikely Path as a 22-Year-Old Lawmaker’, Haskell describes the learning curve and his own misconceptions of who the state lawmakers he served with were and how they went about their work.  Prior to his time in the state legislature, aside from a trip with his dad just before deciding to run, he had never been to Hartford, the state’s capitol city, or its legislature.  It’s a book about discovery and growth, as well as encouragement for America’s young people, particularly Gen X’ers, not to wait their turn.

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Meditation is certainly trending in America. Perhaps, it’s growth can be attributed to the stress of the pandemic or the quieting of the American mind while spending more time at home. Whatever the reason, it’s benefits can be profound according to research. It can help with stress, burnout insomnia and anxiety, while also demonstrating positive impacts on conditions ranging from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder to increasing an enzyme needed to delay the onset of diseases, including Alzheimer’s. Schools are now including mindfulness activities into their daily routine as are many businesses with great results in productivity increases. Joining us to discuss meditation is Dr. Krishna Bhatta, the founder of Relaxx, an app that helps people achieve their meditation goals.

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Small business is the engine of America’s private sector and in a moment when many people are abandoning their jobs, often they are looking for the opportunity to replace their paycheck income with a successful small business that gives them more freedom and self determination.  And while it is not for those who lack the courage to fail, it’s a great moment to take a hold of the efficiencies that technology affords to a small business to outsource and automate your way to success with the right idea.  Most important is finding your niche in sectors that are emerging before others find a path there.  Elaine Pofeldt, a business journalist, is the author of the new book ‘Tiny Business Big Money: Strategies for Creating a High Revenue Microbusiness’.  She offers very practical advice on this podcast as to the process you should undertake if you are considering such a major move in your life. As she demonstrates, bigger is not always better, but smarter and more targeted can be.  This podcast is clearly worth your time.

 

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Abraham Lincoln is often called the Great Emancipator. Yet perhaps his equally valuable contribution to the rights of American citizens was to rip up the Constitution of 1787 and replace it with the one we have today. The original Constitution, nowhere included a stated commitment to equality for each of us. It was a document built on compromise, which accepted the enslavement of those who came to our shores from Africa and held back rights to many others, including women and those who were not white, male property owners. Lincoln took extra-Constitutional measures to replace pre Civil War America with one that aspires to become a more moral country. Where we are in the process of ‘becoming’ remains an open question, but certainly is a far cry from 19th century America. In his compelling book, ‘The Broken Constitution’, Harvard Law Professor, Noah Feldman portrays the struggles Lincoln went through to make the war one more about emancipation than his initial goal of preservation of the Union. As a podcast dedicated to the future, we ask this great scholar to weigh in on the challenges the Union faces today.

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America and its allies in NATO have just applied the most onerous sanctions yet on Vladimir Putin, his fellow kleptocrats and the people of Russia. The question is how effective will they be? In many ways that depends on what the objective was in putting them in place. If it was to stop his invasion of Ukraine, obviously it did not work. Since it came after Russia invaded a sovereign country, as of this moment, it has not stopped the conflict. It clearly is affecting the Russian economy and the daily lives of its citizens. Ben Coates, a Wake Forest University professor, is investigating the history of economic sanctions in the 20th century. While these measures taken against Russia are unprecedented, such pressure on a country usually effective thirty percent of the time. There are so many angles to the sanctions question and so many derivations from embargoes to export controls to trade sanctions to asset freezes. While Putin calls it an economic act of war, he is looking for ways around it. Like many of the topics we deal with on this podcast, it’s complicated. Listen carefully and gain new insights into a term that has many meanings.

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Americans have been leaving their jobs in record numbers as the pandemic has rolled on. While this fact in and of itself is interesting, perhaps more intriguing is ‘why’. Our guest Kristin Schuchman, a certified business coach and author of the book ‘Jump Start: How to redirect a career that has stalled, lost direction or reached a crossroads’ has seen too much in her career consulting practice to ascribe any one factor as the key reason. Some people felt overworked and vulnerable in their front line positions at restaurants and in hospitality during the surges of the pandemic, while others gained new insights into how they defined ‘work-life balance’ given what they had been through. Still others were dissatisfied with their workplace before the pandemic and the company response hastened their decision. Little discussed reasons are touched upon in this podcast, including the record number of baby boomers who were on the verge of retirement who took this opportunity to take the plunge, given rising housing values and stock market gains. It’s clearly a trend and an interesting one which we explore in depth on this podcast.

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For centuries, the downfall of one global empire has been followed by the rise of another.  America was top dog when the Soviet Union fell apart, but our guest argues that is no longer its position.  We are now in what he terms ‘The Enduring Disorder’.  Yes, the institutions we established after World War to keep order around the globe are still in place, but our willingness, and that of our Allies, to act in concert to enforce these rules has waned.  That fact, according to Jason Pack, a senior analyst at the NATO Foundation, played itself out on the world stage in microcosm in post-Qadhafi Libya, thus the title of his book ‘Libya and the Global Enduring Disorder’.  As I write this description of our conversation, while President Biden has worked hard to get the old band back together, it was too late to convince Vladimir Putin of the West’s resolve to protect an international system built on the notion that sovereign borders could not be changed by force.  Mr. Pack shares much original thinking about how we have reached this point and the dangers inherent in its continuation.  Be attentive, as I say, Mr. Pack unpacks a lot of political theory and practical examples of the unstable world which we now inhabit.

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Throughout our history, state and federal legislators have limited the scope of medical treatments available to us. In the spirit of our prized individualism, Americans have often opposed this and pursued their own therapies, which may fall outside the bounds of that which the medical establishment might prescribe. During the pandemic that demand to go our own way has found people rejecting clear and indisputable evidence of the life savings capabilities of vaccines. It’s all part of an American tradition. In his book, ‘Choose Your Medicine’, American University Professor of History and Law, Lewis Grossman, presents a compelling look at how persistent notions of the right to therapeutic choice play out in modern day debates about cannabis, abortion and physician assisted suicide, among other hot button medical topics.

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